


Like This

by Marta



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF Molly, Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia, F/F, F/M, Female-Centric, Femslash, Gap Filler, POV Female Character, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sex, background Molliarty, general abuse of Rumi, of the fade to grey variety but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 02:00:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9856895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marta/pseuds/Marta
Summary: She’d answered the door, barefoot and flannel pyjama bottoms and a cotton tee I recognized as Jim’s, and then had unceremoniously deposited herself back on his couch. The butterfly tattoo on her ankle peaked out at me, a half-hidden secret not quite tucked under her thigh. Jim had looked up from his laptop then, introduced her as a friend of his from his Chicago days who was getting herself settled in London.That was a lie, of course, but by the time I found out Jim had told so many lies (Galway-born, unassuming system administrator, not-gay, though he had oddly enough been telling the truth when he professed his love for Deep Space Nine), the ones about Irene hardly seemed to matter.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [billiethepoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/billiethepoet/gifts), [cleflink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleflink/gifts).



To most people (certainly to those who knew her primarily through her Twitter account, or the evening news), she will always be the Woman. Risqué, perhaps. Titillating, certainly. Undeniably – tragically or predictably, depending on his assessment, for it always seems to be a he – but undeniably all the same, undeniably dead. And always the very definition of sex, and so of femininity: Irene Adler, the Woman, of dubious and questionable memory.

I had the unique fate to make her acquaintance on more intimate (and ordinary) terms. It was a Thursday evening, unseasonably warm for March, and early enough into the year I hadn’t unpacked my window-fan. My flat was sure to be sweltering, but Jim’s was newly renovated, and with central air. So I’d retrieved the Glee DVD’s I’d been threatening him with from my flat (overwarm, as predicted), picked up an order of shawarma and naan, and made my way to his place.

She’d answered the door, barefoot and flannel pyjama bottoms and a cotton tee I recognized as Jim’s, and then had unceremoniously deposited herself back on his couch. The butterfly tattoo on her ankle peaked out at me, a half-hidden secret not quite tucked under her thigh. Jim had looked up from his laptop then, introduced her as a friend of his from his Chicago days who was getting herself settled in London. That was a lie, of course, but by the time I found out Jim had told so many lies (Galway-born, unassuming system administrator, not-gay, though he had oddly enough been telling the truth when he professed his love for _Deep Space Nine_ ), the ones bout Irene hardly seemed to matter.

Or they wouldn’t have – shouldn’t have. But after? Well. There are other ways to build a kinship.

 

 

> _When I am with you, we stay up all the night._  
>  _When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep._  
>  _Praise God for those two insomnias!_  
>  _And the difference between them._

 

What I remembered most, after, were the stories. Her father was a military contractor of some sort, and she’d spent some time traveling with him after her mother died and before he’d deposited her in a proper school. Cairo and Kabul, Tel Aviv and Beirut. It was the shawarma that started her off, tumbling into a lecture a wizened gardener had given her on the true history of chess, then the virtues of the buzuq over the viola, interspersed with snatches of Rumi.

I remembered her hair, too, half pulled back into a braid down her back with a stray wisp falling low across her brow and tucked behind her ear. Skin smooth and fair like a porcelain doll’s, even without makeup. Her blue eyes, full lips. I wondered what that black strand would feel like against the back of my hand, if I reached out to touch; if Jim hadn’t been sitting across the room. But mostly, it was the stories that sprung to mind, when I thought about that night weeks and months later. The stories, and their teller.

The next week, when I picked up a volume of Rumi from Waterstone’s, I read it over bowls of chicken korma at my desk in St. Bart’s. Committed it to memory. Later, as I turned my bedroom’s lights down low and looked at the moon’s light making its way across my stomach, over breast and hip, as I touched myself, I heard her voice whispering it in my ear:

 

 

> _I want to see you._
> 
> _Know your voice._
> 
> _Recognize you when you  
>  first come ‘round the corner._
> 
> _Sense your scent when I come  
>  into a room you’ve just left._
> 
> _Know the lift of your heel,  
>  the glide of your foot._
> 
> _Become familiar with the way_  
>  _you purse your lips_  
>  _then let them part,_  
>  _just the slightest bit,_  
>  _when I lean in to your space_  
>  _and kiss you._

 

When her first text arrived, I did wonder how she’d obtained my number, but I also didn’t hesitate to respond. First were the mundane dribs and drabs: dry cleaning picked up, girl’s night at Ronnie Scott’s, my supervisor raking me over the coals yet again about the seven thumbs that had mysteriously disappeared on my watch. Then, as time went on: the less grizzly details of particularly challenging post mortems (she had said she liked a good mystery), tucked in alongside photos of Toby. Delivery confirmations of turmeric, cumin, and jasmine rice (hers, to my flat; no doubt a better quality than I would find at Sainsbury’s, and better-tasting in any event, though I could not rule out the psychosomatic).

Photos of a new shoe from Milan, her calf pushed out just so.

Snippets of cummings. Auden. Catullus. Song of Solomon. Anything to make me blush. And Rumi, always Rumi.

 

 

> _Lovers move like lightning and wind._  
>  _No contest._  
>  _Theologians mumble, rumble-dumble, necessity and free will, while lover and beloved_  
>  _pull themselves into each other._

 

There was more than one way to be pulled into. Jim had taught me that much: groin to groin, and in, yes, but also fingers and tongue, and even molded silicone and leather strap, so I could give as well as receive. With another woman the parts would be different, but now I had cause to think on it, my imagination was hardly lacking.

I told myself it was my mind’s rebelling at the everyday, that she was so outside the ordinary my libido would react this way to anyone so fascinating, male or female. I had always liked boys well enough, and now men; had never really considered I might like anything better. And honestly, when I attended my first FFLAG meeting in that brief window between Sherlock’s outing Jim in the labs at St. Bart’s and our cutting it off three weeks later, I really had just wanted some insight into why a gay boy would bed (fuck) a mousy, shy orthopedist, if not to toy with the great consulting detective. But when Irene had suggested a new group meeting a few blocks from St. Bart’s, one targeted more toward queer people themselves _and_ not just their allies, I went.

So perhaps I could be excused for the cold dread that fell upon me, when I accompanied the Holmes brothers to St. Bart’s morgue, pulled down the sheet, and waited for Sherlock to identify her. The way I swallowed against a lump in my throat when he looked at her breast and passed judgment on her identity. He did not dwell on her ankle, on the tattoo that matched the one I’d seen in Jim’s flat in all details except the unavoidable, that had to have been inked on flesh entering rigor mortis. I hadn’t chanced a smile then, or the great whoop threatening to burst out of my chest later: I’d seen what Holmes – both Holmeses – had missed, and she was alive.

Alive, and playing some game. I didn’t think – didn’t let myself think – of that poor woman on the slab, too similar to Irene for her timely death to be mere coincidence; or of how aroused that realization left me, what it said of my quickly-evolving tastes that I was drawn in rather than pushed away. Oh, but she was clever! And a friend of Jim’s; by then I knew well enough just what that could mean.

But I had a hand to play as well. Irene Adler was a public figure of sorts, and thought dead. Belgravia propriety be damned, there was sure to be a memorial somewhere near her place, with candles and flowers and stuffed bears and the like. Surely one stuffed butterfly, its wings purple, pink, and blue, would not be noticed by those who knew her less well? But Irene, if she saw it – she would know, surely.

 

 

> _If anyone asks you_  
>  _how the perfect satisfaction_  
>  _of all our sexual wanting_  
>  _will look, lift your face_  
>  _and say,_
> 
> _Like this._
> 
> _When someone mentions the gracefulness_  
>  _of the night sky, climb on the roof_  
>  _and dance and say,_
> 
> _Like this?_
> 
> _If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is,_  
>  _or what “God’s fragrance” means,_  
>  _lean your head toward him or her._  
>  _Keep your face close._
> 
> _Like this._
> 
> _When someone quotes the old poetic image_  
>  _about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,_  
>  _slowly loosen knot by knot the strings of your robe._
> 
> _Like this?_
> 
> _If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,  
>  don’t try to explain the miracle.  
>  Kiss me on the lips._

_Like this. Like this._

 

Christ’s apostles tarried for four days, huddling in the Upper Room until their Lord returned to them. I had the longer wait, and less time before to build up my faith. True, there were signs: a volume of Dickinson on my nightstand inside my locked flat, without explanation; a bottle of her favorite wine for my table at the Ottolenghi, compliments of an unseen stranger; an umbrella in my office at St. Bart’s that truly miserable day in April, when I’d left my own at home.

But there were no texts, no sure signs from Kate or Sherlock or anyone who might have known. Nothing until that October night, the window fan in place so the room was tolerable even if the thermometer did register 27 C. And there she sat on my couch as if she owned the place, Toby sitting just within arm’s reach making her work to scratch under his chin.

We should have talked, perhaps, about how far either of us wanted to carry things. But we had never been given to communication through words, and the way she looked up at me when the door creaked open, smiled half-apologetically, I couldn’t quite help myself; or I didn’t, in any event. I dropped my bag in my chair and fell half into her lap, half on the couch beside her, earning us both a hiss and her a scratched wrist from Toby for our trouble. “Hello,” I said, running my fingers over the mauled flesh. And then we laughed, forgetting Toby altogether as we fell onto each other properly.

Later, when we made it to a proper bed, I stripped her of her jeans entirely and hiked my skirt halfway up my chest. Straddled her. She kissed me once more, those lips I’d dreamed of against me. First my cheek, the corner of my lips, then behind my ear, along my clavicle to the humeral head, over the uppermost ribs and _pectoralis major,_ finally brushing along the trim of my bra as she worked the clasp free.

Then, devil that she was, she pulled back. “Your turn, isn’t it?”

She flicked her thumb inside my bra, against the nipple, teasing a gasp out of me. “What?” I asked, my higher brain functions gone a little foggy just then.

“Your turn,” she repeated. “I recited for you last time. Show me what you’ve learned?”

Oh, she was Lilith breathed back to life. Naamah. No – she leaned in again, brushing her lips against my right nipple, and I groaned aloud – no, she was Shiva incarnate descended on my West London flat. But I’d hardly let her show me up.

“ _They fell to_ ,” I began in stuttering breath, “ _fell to, on the ground.  
You’ve seen a baker, rolling dough _ – “

She kneaded my left breast with her free hand, avoiding the more sensitive areola in a choice worthy of Tantalus.

“ _– kneads it gently at first, then more roughly.  
Pounds – pounds it on the board. It softly groans under –_ “ As did I.

“ _Now spreads it out and rolls it flat_.” Forsaking literary symbolism for my hindbrain’s urging, I rolled my knees open, making a space for her. “Would that you had three hands,” I groaned.

She slapped my thigh at that, but couldn’t (didn’t) keep herself from chuckling, and I arched up at the vibrations against my skin. “Continue,” she admonished, but from the smirk on her face I knew she was as amused as I was; or so near to being beyond caring, it made little difference. Even so, I was a woman, and proud member of the Royal College of Surgeons. I had never been one to shirk a challenge outside the bedroom, and Irene seemed intent on building that habit up here as well. I’d give my best try, at least.

 

 

> _Then she bunches it,_  
>  _and rolls it all the way out again, thin._  
>  _Now she adds water and mixes it well._
> 
> _Now and a little more salt. Now she shapes it delicately_  
>  _to its final shape and slides it into the oven, which is already hot._  
>  _You remember breadmaking!_

 

She was gone, when I woke the next morning. Irene was after all, officially dead, and too well known in London to stay there long. Even if she’d been telling the truth that her continued existence had Mycroft Holmes’s blessing and Sherlock’s knowledge, I wouldn’t tempt fate where she was concerned, even if I counted the days until she could return. She’d left a white rose on my pillow, though, and a new volume of poetry, this time Sappho. Tangible proof that she’d been there, and would return to continue my tutelage when she did. As if I needed such evidence! The ache in my thighs, and deeper, as I sat up to examine the book was proof enough.

Three months I waited for word, then the plane tickets to Karachi. Six months; Munich (my choice, my dime; I’d always wanted to see it anyway), then a blessed two weeks before an overnight in Essex. And always, always, though the sending numbers changed, the texts with those six words that never ceased to make me smile:

“I’m not dead; let’s have dinner.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Come at Once](http://come-at-once.livejournal.com/) challenge, for the prompt "unseasonably warm." Given the challenge and the fact I had both Irene and Moriarty at my disposal, there's a depressing lack of actual kink. I'm pretty sure this isn't what the Jesuits had in mind for my doctoral work in philosophy of religion, though, so there is that.
> 
> Details of Molly Hooper's medical career borrowed from wellingtongoose, particularly [this essay](http://wellingtongoose.tumblr.com/post/31926026103/semantics4). For Irene's backstory I've pulled from my older story [Grit on the Lens](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3100598), though I hope this makes sense on its own.


End file.
